1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to telecommunications systems, and more particularly, to predictive customer service queue management.
2. Related Art
It is typical for organizations with large constituencies to receive thousands of customer inquiries each day. These may come in the form of emails, web site visits, telephone calls, or even face-to-face interaction in a retail scenario. The handling of these inquiries is oftentimes automated, including websites with self-service elements and interactive voice response systems (IVRs). N Telephone calls coming into automatic call distributors (ACDs) or private branch exchanges (PBXs) are handled by various computer-telephony integration (CTI) techniques. Such automation is employed as a means to reduce costs and reduce the need for live customer service personnel to handle these inquiries. Nevertheless, larger organizations tend to spend millions of dollars each year on the development and maintenance of systems used to handle customer interaction.
From the user's perspective, however, there are several problems associated with interactive voice response systems. Many are poorly designed and can be very frustrating for the user to navigate. Indeed, some customers are so loathe to use automated systems for this reason, that they will instantly “opt out” of an automated system and demand live service. Of course, the wholesale adoption of this practice is costly for companies that employ automation systems. Additionally, users must traverse complex interfaces to different options and selections that assist with the improved routing of the call to the appropriate customer service agent. However, even after navigating through numerous prompts, callers may be placed on hold for a long period of time while earlier callers in the queue are being serviced. Although improvements have been made to better staff call centers during times of peak volume or in anticipation of high volumes attributable to some other cause, extensive hold times further frustrate the customer experience. A frequent complaint is that customers have something better or more productive to do rather than waiting for the call to be answered.
From the perspective of the organization, long hold times are also problematic. It is most often the case that a primary customer service number is toll-free to the caller/customer, but there are otherwise high costs incurred by the organization. Thus, the longer a customer is placed on hold through an in-bound 8xx call, the more expensive that particular phone call is. Companies have not adapted to the newer Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) capabilities because it is difficult to link these capabilities to an 800 number. Furthermore, customers do not have an incentive to use a VoIP-based phone when the number they are calling is free to them.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an improved customer service queue management system that minimizes time spent on hold to the benefit of the caller and the call center. There is also a need in the art for a queue management system that can accept incoming calls and re-initiate calls based on predicted queue length.